{ what of breaking }

i don't know what to write lately. the voices of the world are so loud. sometimes i can't even respond to text messages --- a lot of communication feels like an assault. i field questions, interruptions, and demands for information/social rituals at work for hours each day that i'm not able to refuse --- sometimes i think my reticence with personal interaction is born solely from a desire to exercise my will. i had no choice but to answer every phone call, email, and real-time query that arose for the past 10 hours...my capacity to respond to anything has been reached, whether i want to talk to you or not.

i think it's hard for my friends and family to understand this, and it's hard for me to articulate it without feeling like a socially retarded scrooge of a soul. not to mention i don't always feel like i should have to explain the most fundamental, most private parts of myself to anyone. if you don't get it, okay. if you don't like it, fuck off. even if i cared to please you, i don't have the energy to try.

because pleasing others has never been my forte, and because i am only a quitter when it comes to embarking on impossible endeavors. if i know i won't succeed at something, i will say no before i start. and i'm sure there's someone out there cocking her head and squinting her eyes saying, but how do you know something's impossible before you try? and to that person i say, pleasing everyone in your life all the time with your behavior toward (or away from) them is impossible. if it is possible, i'm not interested. i have tried, you know, and i think i actually did a bang-up job, because people liked me (correction: my willingness to act as they desired). but never have i felt so imprisoned, so petrified, so hollowed-out inside. 

i closed off that brittle part of me years ago. i'm still working on closing it off. i don't think it's realistic to think i'll rid myself completely of the compulsion to people-please. i don't yet have a good metaphor with which to understand how to manage it. is it a deep cavern in the recesses of my soul that's been blocked off by debris in the wake of my soul's tectonic shifting over the years? is it a little girl in a cage who looks innocent but could break all my ribs from the inside if she's not locked up properly? 

all i know is, it's one of the few places i don't care to revisit that people want to access more often than i'd like. so i'm constantly protecting it, but not because it's precious to me. i want to keep people away from it because if it's exposed again, it will kill me.

but what of self sacrifice?

what of putting others before myself?

am i selfish? is my soul shriveled? 

i am not generous. i am not kind.

i am not willing to break for someone else.

i am, though. i am willing to break.

but not at someone else's will, so he can exercise his power over me.

not to fulfill another person's need to control.

and not because you want something specific from me

whose only purpose is to serve your own good.

but if you let me sit, consider my silence sacred ---

if you protect my solitude, if you stand at the threshold of my soul

and wait for me to emerge, ready to see you ---

if you show me yourself, if you tell me something about the world

without pulling at me or trying to get inside to places you haven't been invited ---

i would break for you. i would show you a bone,

a ligament, my aortic valve.

i would be laid bare on the rocks of the world,

for you.